The pressure has really gone up as parental challenges create enormous tasks for parents, in handling expectations and keeping up with stress that comes with parenting. These challenges can come from parents taking care of their children, financial consciousness, children’s activities, medical appointments, healthy lifestyle and general family welfare. It is the daunting task that parents carry on their shoulders to meet up with every bit of its expectations, thereby leaving their own mental health fragile. Not even single parent is relieved of all these tasks, whenever the child is not within their reach, like in school, playgrounds with other kids or involving in extracurricular activities, their minds are constantly towards the safety of the child.
Third world countries battling with acute economic crisis are in major quagmire in dealing with these parental challenges. Particularly in Africa, where countries with robust laws but zero implementations, because those laws did not emanate from the people, it was copied and pasted. Some mechanisms which would have been in place to deal with parental challenges are not there, parents are left to deal with every bit of children’s development, parents and teachers association has gone moribund, parents have lost the signal in keeping tap of the developmental circle of their children and community centres where kids can spend time away from home to learn new skills are new in this clime, due to the stress and general family welfare parents are losing responsibilities that come with these tasks.
Financial stability, one of the major issues of parenting. The continuous rise in food stuff, groceries, medicine and cosmetics, parents are left chasing these needs to keep the family together thereby losing connection with other responsibilities. They place these expectations on themselves not knowing how much they have been affected, sometimes it becomes so serious that they take blame for not meeting the expectations, and it is taking a negative toll on them, if they feel all time low or dejected, there are high chances that this type of energy will be transmitted to the children, through responses they get after questions or the general body language of the parents.
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It sometimes brings instability in a family, where a parent who is not mentally capable to stomach these parental challenges may opt out and see divorce as an escape route. People are escaping their marriages, leaving their children and partner to go away from the saturated atmosphere, which is far from the best decision to take, alternatively they could be a way to approach it. The growing trend has emerged but yet to have any foothold, this trend is about boycotting the ideal of children in marriage. People now go into marriage with the understanding that they will have no child in the marriage, just adventures and enjoying each other company, while it appears to be an anomaly people are embracing this route.
Every day parents are facing different parental challenges to keep tap with responsibilities, investing on the children’s meteoric development as to avoid steps which may be detrimental to the kids, but while they do this, they often time step outside the boundary unconsciously. The issue of smartphone has emerged as topical issue over time, on whether children age from 10-17 can take their phones to school. While this issue sustained different views, where the answer resides is with the kid’s academic performance, the amount of time spend with the phone during school hours and outside school hours, the level of personal development and growth, his responsiveness to learning.
How Parental Challenges can be handled
Parents should not be hard on the expectations while they long for these goals, they should build that mental wall to deal with disappointments, which seem inevitable sometimes. Building more connections with your kids and partner, and even trusted friends can ease up the pressure and help you to deal with the stress. Taking time to create a fun game with the kids, take them out to the park watch them play their favourite games, bonding with your partner in this time brings relieve. It gives you the opportunity to recoup and bring more energy towards your pursuit in life. This can provide a relieve without putting extra pressure of worrying about what the kids might be doing when there are not with them.
Self-assessment is very important in dealing with parental challenges, you have to look inwardly to know where and what you’re spending your time with, it could be a major determinant of where your mind and soul reside. You don’t have to be everywhere at the same time, and constantly scrolling through apps in your phone. You need to create that safe place within, joy and happiness shouldn’t be outside yourself, you need to bring it within and connecting more with kids’ activities. Taking them to school competitions, knowing that you’re watching doesn’t not only give them more energy to go at it, but also create safe atmosphere for you to feel relieve off pressure and feel free.
